Specific approaches are those dedicated solely to mitigating a particular hazard and which have no other intentional purpose. They have saved many lives and countless amounts of property damage. Shelters designed to provide safe havens from sea flooding, for example, have saved thousands in Orissa, India (Sparrow, 2001); cyclone warning systems in the Pacific provide timely warnings to poor small island countries; thousands of flood-resistant houses provide protection in Vietnam (Jaquemet, 2001); and earthquake, wind and fire building codes in many countries similarly protect households and businesses. Major levee or dike systems protect the populations of many countries against sea and river flooding. The Netherlands may present the extreme case, where dikes keep the sea out and allow the nation to flourish. However, levees may also increase vulnerability, and when they gave way in The Netherlands and the US (in New Orleans and elsewhere), the consequences were thousands of deaths and massive property damage.
Opportunities for promoting and implementing specific approaches present themselves in various ways (see the discussion of ‘Policy and institutional learning:
Purposes and forms’ in Chapter 7):
• immediately following a disaster when these measures have high priority, as well as public support;
• where there are organizations whose mission includes the use of specific tools, such as engineering works and public education;
• when local people demand action in the face of perceived risks;
• when the institutional context would enable and support low-cost measures, such as minor changes to building techniques that can often result in large improvements and locally based warning systems, which are an underused, low-cost measure.
Important constraints and qualifications surrounding specific approaches and measures include the following:
• Measures are often given low priority by governments and the public so that those at risk must be involved and support the measure.
• Measures divert scarce resources from other priorities, which may be perceived as more socially and politically urgent.
• Measures may not address underlying causes of vulnerability, but only mitigate the impacts of events.
• Occasionally, measures and approaches may make the situation worse – for example, by increasing vulnerability to other hazards or by providing a false sense of security so that important complementary measures are overlooked.
Emergency management agencies tend to favour specific approaches – that is their mandate. They may also be limited by the problem framing and institutional division of roles that do not see disasters as a human development issue. However, in poorer countries, those at risk see the generic or macro-issue of livelihood security as key to their resilience.
The differences between the two general approaches may not be as significant as it first appears. Often, the two approaches are intertwined, with many specific approaches depending on the right generic or institutional conditions for their success.
For crisis response: Flexibility and adaptability
Strategic policy work is about trying to shape the future. Yet, by definition, the future is unknowable. Reconciling this apparent paradox is the task less of the emergency manager than of the disasters and emergency policy and institutional system within which the manager operates.
Developing and rehearsing a range of scenarios is a fundamental tool for fram- ing the future and for establishing the relationships and generic plans needed for major events. Generic plans include mass (and specific types of casualties, such as burns) casualties; communications; media; evacuation or sheltering options;
transport; energy; search and rescue; radiological and other contaminants; visits by dignitaries; how to manage political pressure; and so on. However, even very well- resourced scenarios and plans can fail in spectacular fashion, as with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The political and media circumstances may be such that failure is almost unnoticed. Alternatively, emergency managers may feel blamed for natural phenomena and pushed into action that, while politically useful, does little to help the people (as with much international post-impact disaster aid or some mass evacuations). This is another reminder that emergency managers, unlike their colleagues in most other areas of public policy, are faced with having to make urgent, critical binary decisions to do one thing or another with no other option, scope for delay or compromise, and which may be difficult to reverse.
Plans, scenarios and exercises are a guide. They are not reality, although occa- sionally (especially with smaller more routine events) the event and response will unfold as expected and planned for. One of the major challenges for emergency managers is to accept the limitations of the planning and preparedness tools. As just mentioned, apart from smaller events, these tools should be seen as a means to an end – that is, to develop the relationships and mindsets needed for the manage- ment of major events with all the unexpected issues and problems that they bring.
They are not ends in themselves. Put another way, planning is a way of making an idea work. Planning ‘must be societal [i.e. not an individual activity], future oriented, non-routinized, deliberate [not trial and error], strategic, and linked to action’ (Alexander, 1986, p43).
One aim of the planning process is to build a constituency of support for the plan or guidelines. The document (called the plan or guide) should be seen as a record of agreements reached during the process of planning; but with circum- stances constantly changing, the document is unlikely to ever be completely up to date. Emergency planning in this way can be viewed as more process than product.
The relationships and decision-making skills developed during planning and complex exercises should form the basis of a flexible, adaptable approach to emer- gency management. But they will not do this automatically. A critical approach is needed rather than a self-congratulatory one. This may be harder to achieve in an environment increasingly defined by security or counter-terrorism, rather than by public safety from natural and technological threats. One result is that planning and exercises may be closed to external scrutiny. Nevertheless, if trust exists or can be developed across institutions, it may be possible to include a range of perspec- tives and critical evaluation, while keeping the processes confidential. Failure to include diverse perspectives almost guarantees that the exercises will be predictable and does little to develop the necessary flexibility and adaptive capacity needed to handle future disasters.
By changing and limiting the impact of disaster, emergency management can influence the future. At best, this results in improved resilience and capacities – at worst, in a narrowing of learning possibilities and increased reliance on centralized interventions.